"Okay, pull up her profile. Let's look for something you have in common," you say, taking his laptop from him.
Scrolling through her page, you seem to only find things that Diego doesn't have in common with her. She likes cats, but Diego doesn't have any pets. He could borrow Gabriela's hamster, but that seems like a bad idea. Ashley also seems to like weird close-up photos of random objects, but copying her would be super obvious and kind of creepy.
"Here. She likes plants. Looks like she has a whole mini indoor garden of succulents," you point out.
"I don't have any succulents," Diego says.
"You have that," you say, pointing to the half-dead fern in the corner of his room.
"I don't know. My mom put that in here to make my room look nicer but it's in kind of rough shape. I don't remember the last time I watered it."
"We can use filters to make it look a little greener," you tell him as you take him by the shoulders and position him in front of the plant.
"So this is literally just going to be a picture of me in front of a dead fern," he says.
You grab a book from nearby and slap it in his lap. "Pretend you're reading."
He does as you say, and you take the picture. After several minutes of trying to edit the image so the plant looks a little better, you go ahead and post it.
"It might look a little greener, but nothing is hiding the fact that those leaves are shriveled," he says. "I look like a terrible plant dad."
You wait for a while to see if Ashley takes notice. She's definitely online and commenting on other people's stuff right now.
The post gets zero likes but does get a sad emoji from his mom.
"Why don't you take better care of the fern I gave you?" she comments.
After Diego has had some time to stew in his angst, he snaps out of it a bit.
"All right, sorry, I got too sucked into my own head there. One day I'll get my act together and stop being such a nervous wreck about this stuff."
One day, but probably not any time soon. You keep that thought to yourself, though.
"Let's think about something else," he says. "Want to play a game or something?"